Criticism and evasion of digital boundaries

Teacher(s)

This seminar is devoted to analysing practices of resistance to the increasing and complex systems used to control online activities by both private and public operators. Discussion will cover the arts of evasion and misappropriation used by web professionals (hackers, ISPs, engineers, experts, etc.) against the new legal regulations and technical changes intended to monitor and constrain the use of the internet. It will analyse the appropriation and circulation of tools, practices and skills for evasive purposes, and their use and promotion by “professionals of public space” (journalists, publishers, voluntary organisations, urban entrepreneurs). It will also study strategies to evade the new online coercion via exile.

Using the emblematic example of Russia, a country where tensions are high between globalised digital freedoms and policies to regulate the national internet officially justified by motives of digital network security, the discussion will be comparative and multidisciplinary. In addition to Russia, the seminar aims to contribute to the debate on the reconfigurations of political life in the contemporary world as a result of digital technologies.